


Does this name mean anything to you

by AriadneKnowsTheWay



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Historical, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Bittersweet, Bittersweet Ending, Crack and Angst, First Kiss, Heavy Angst, M/M, Sad Ending, War, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:01:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27897973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AriadneKnowsTheWay/pseuds/AriadneKnowsTheWay
Summary: Haku's dark eyes fogged up. Neji didn’t want to know or hear anything about it. Above all, he didn’t want to cry. Dying still seemed to him the sweetest thing.
Relationships: Haku/Hyuuga Neji, Haku/Momochi Zabuza
Kudos: 4





	Does this name mean anything to you

Noise of gunshots.  
  
Were the screams ringing all around him – or was it his mind recalling what had happened a few moments earlier?  
  
  
He threw himself into the pit, landing with a deaf thud.  
  
He got up and settled down as best he could behind that wall, with his rifle at his side and his helmet in his lap.  
  
  
He closed his eyes – of that striking white color, so overly clear for a Nazi like him.  
  
That word, Nazi, echoed in his head.  
  
Immediately he tried to put it back where it had always been buried, somewhere in his conscience – he wasn’t a Nazi, not really, he just followed orders, he just followed his destiny already planned by others.  
  
  
He didn’t succeed.  
  
It almost seemed as if all his mental defenses had fallen apart at the very moment that damn grenade had exploded.  
  
There was so much smoke...  
  
So much dust...  
  
The heat was unbearable...  
  
  
He grabbed his head with his dirty hands – once so neat and tidy, girl’s hands as uncle Hiashi called them with contempt.  
  
He had to stay calm.  
  
  
The sound of footsteps.  
  
He didn’t raise his head. Why should he?  
  
If they had killed him, they would only have done him a favor... – no, don’t think about it, if you think about it once, you’ll always think about it...  
  
The dry clunk of a loaded gun.  
  
  
He continued not to move. Why should he?  
  
To shoot another human being, perhaps with a family waiting for him in England?  
  
It was better that he was the one to die, if it had to be like that – and he thought it over, enticed by the idea of ending it all.  
  
“NEJI!”  
  
Rock Lee.  
  
He raised his head, surprised.  
  
And in so doing he met the eyes of his enemy.  
  
  
Big eyes, dark brown, thick eyelashes.  
  
For a single moment he thought it was a girl instead of a soldier.  
  
He smiled, unaware.  
  
He didn’t really think that death had such eyes...  
  
  
One shot.  
  
The other soldier falls.  
  
Neji is watching. Motionless.  
  
  
The body collapses to the ground.  
  
Another sound of footsteps, a sympathetic pat on the shoulder.  
  
“Neji! For a second I thought you were dead! But you’re young, and you still have so much energy to spend!”  
  
Lee and his senseless speeches.  
  
  
“Is he... dead?” asked Neji. He kept staring at the chest of that boy – man? – without realizing if he was only wounded or if he had really died.  
  
“I have no idea!” Lee went to check it out, gun in hand, but Neji stopped him.  
  
“No need Lee, I’ll take care of it. You go back to the base and tell them I’m on my way”.  
  
“They’ll kick your ass if you come back late, Neji”.  
  
“It doesn’t matter. Just go”.  
  
  
He heard him walk away, nimbly jumping the barricade and then vanishing, surely heading for the base as Neji had told him.  
  
  
He got up.  
  
He approached the body of the English soldier.  
  
He was still breathing.  
  
  
“Ah... a-ah...”  
  
  
The Hyuga knelt down beside him, and without even thinking about what he was doing, took off his helmet.  
  
He was amazed to see the signs of a fairly recent shave.  
  
He, too, had had his hair shaved to zero as soon as he entered the army.  
  
He was a little disappointed, but he couldn’t object.  
  
It was just hair, after all.  
  
  
He too had been given a weapon as soon as he entered the army.  
  
He too had shot a lot of people.  
  
He was a little disappointed, but he couldn’t object.  
  
They were only human beings, after all.  
  
  
“O-oh... a German...” the voice was panting and broken. There must have been internal bleeding somewhere, but Neji wasn’t a doctor.  
  
“Yes”.  
  
“I thought they were all blond with blue e-eyes...”  
  
The Hyuga couldn’t hold back a bitter smile.  
  
“And instead I was wrong...” the English man murmured again. “What is... what is your... what's your name...?”  
  
“Who cares? In a few minutes you’ll be dead” coldly said Neji.  
  
  
A few moments of silence passed, interrupted only by the gusts of gunfire around them.  
  
  
“M-my name is Haku... I’m eighteen years old...”  
  
“Stop it. I don’t care what you say” said Neji.  
  
_Stop talking._  
  
_Just stop fucking talking._  
  
_Stop making me feel guilty for being the cause of your death.  
  
  
_“If I could only see my family again... they hate me, you know?” He didn’t wait for an answer, it looked like a flood that broke the banks. He didn’t seem to care where he was, or with whom he was. Or why he was there. Neji wasn’t sure that Haku was aware of the circumstances, but he probably was – only that he didn’t care, one step away from death. “They hate me so much, but I’ve never done anything to deserve it... if I could see them again... I would ask them why they hated me so much... but the colonel... oh, my colonel...”  
  
Haku's dark eyes fogged up. Neji didn’t want to know or hear anything about it. Above all, he didn’t want to cry. Dying still seemed to him the sweetest thing.  
  
“Who knows if he’ll miss me...”  
  
“Stop it”.  
  
“I wonder if he’ll think of me...”  
  
“Kid, I’m serious, stop it now”.  
  
“I wonder if...”  
  
“Haku—”  
  
“I wonder if he l-loved me as I l-loved him...”  
  
  
It was all too much at once. And Neji was a human being. Still.  
  
“My name... is Neji. I’m twenty-seven years old”. Neji began feverishly – all to stop Haku, all to silence his damned conscience...  
  
“Neji... it’s a beautiful name...” Haku smiled.  
  
  
Silence.  
  
  
“N-neji...”  
  
“...”  
  
“H-have you ever kissed a girl?”  
  
  
The question came unexpectedly.  
  
_Yes, kid,_ thought Neji. _Yes, I have kissed a girl. The same girl that I got pregnant. The same girl who was deported as a Jew. The same girl who in all likelihood didn’t make it through the winter. Tenten. My Tenten.  
  
_Haku had her eyes. Or was it Tenten who had Haku’s eyes?  
  
_Every victim has her eyes_ thought Neji.  
  
  
“... no”.  
  
“N-neither do I”. Lopsided smile, and the German wondered how the kid could smile when he felt his life fleeing away. “And I don’t believe that I would ever do that... ever”.  
  
  
Pause.  
  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Because I’m homosexual”.  
  
“Ah”.  
  
  
A pause, longer.  
  
Haku tried to decipher Neji’s gaze, but he didn’t succeed.  
  
“I’ve never even kissed a man”.  
  
“...”  
  
“... I don’t want to die without knowing what a kiss is like...”  
  
  
Another pause, full of meaning.  
  
  
The two looked at each other.  
  
On the one hand the German, Nazi forced, straight. On the other, the English, on the verge of emptiness, homosexual.  
  
But what could these differences mean, in the face of something as devastating as death?  
  
What were they if not words?  
  
  
Neji leaned out, bringing his face closer to that of the boy.  
  
_I don’t know if I’m a man. I don’t know if I want to be one, if I ever want to be one. Men kill. The get killed.  
  
_Wrong, perhaps.  
  
_I don’t know what’s right_.  
  
Inappropriate, surely.  
  
But somehow, he felt he owed it to him.  
  
  
A light, short kiss, a kiss with the taste of dust and blood.  
  
A kiss of war.  
  
  
They parted, and immediately Haku opened his mouth to say something with the last of his strength.  
  
“Don’t say anything” Neji stopped him.  
  
“But...”  
  
“D-don’t say anything”.  
  
  
So it was.  
  
  
Haku Hajime died, watched over by Neji Hyuga.  
  
On paper, things might have seemed a little bizarre: an eighteen-year-old Englishman who died with a 27-year-old German, Nazi, from a respectable family.  
  
But for Neji and Haku, together at that moment, nothing could have been more right.

  
  


*

  
  


A door.  
  
A plaque.  
  
  
Neji read it, recognizing the name of the colonel of Haku.  
  
Thirty years later, he still hadn’t forgotten.  
  
He rang, pressing the button on the intercom – his hands were back manicured (not cleaned, never cleaned) – but by then old Hiashi was no longer there to make malicious comments about them.  
  
  
The door opened.  
  
  
“Who are you?”  
  
“...”  
  
“What the hell do you want?”  
  
“Are you Momochi Zabusa?”  
  
“I am”.  
  
“...”  
  
“And you?”  
  
“My name is Hyuga Neji”.  
  
“Hyuga... it doesn’t tell me anything”.  
  
A bitter smile, the same smile that he gave to that eighteen year old dying man years ago.  
  
“And does the name Hajime Haku mean anything to you?”  
  
  
He saw his eyes. That flash. Something that opened wide behind the pupils.  
  
Neji hesitated. Haku hadn’t been forgotten. Somewhere inside that man of steel still lived his memory. It was this that pushed him, more than anything else. He owed it to no one but himself – to those brown eyes.  
  
The man in front of him was wobbling. Inside.  
  
  
“May I come in?”  
  
  
  



End file.
